The world is in shock as the grim footage of the two year-old toddler Yueyue getting run over by a couple of vehicles is spreading throughout the internet. While the drivers escaped the scene, dozens of pedestrians simply pass by the blood-soaked body of the girl. It takes quite a while till someone finally decides to help the dying kid [which has been hospitalized brain dead].

Many media outlets, bloggers and social media users from China and abroad wrote on the incident and some even re-posted the video [I would not go on to do that here]. Often, they went on to comment on how the incident was a reflection of a deeper “disease” of the Chinese society, of the ultimate selfishness brought by economic development or of the legacy of Mao’s era and lack of monotheism [!!!]. Chinese media were especially harsh in their take.

However, while I find the video quite disturbing, and agree that it is an indicator of something being rotten in the Middle Kingdom, I refuse to join the bandwagon of “Chinese mentality” bashers. I believe most of the reactions to the incident suffer from a) over-generalization; b) singliing “China” from the rest of humanity.

First, to say that the incident shows us how China is today is getting things way out of their proportion. What happened in Foshan is exception, rather than the rule [even metaphorically speaking]. While I would agree that Chinese people are not the most helpful people in the world [but then, who is?], I claim that there are still many Chinese people who actually would help a local or a foreigner in a most frank, altruistic manner – such as the person who actually saved the little Yueyue at the end. Looking beyond the case – I could easily bring in my personal experience, but I won’t, since it might lead to another fallacy – that Chinese are extremely helpful. Truth is, Chinese, and people in general, can choose help or not, but it really depends on situation, which brings me to the second point.

What I find even less appealing in the debate, is the tendency to single out China as a unique case – as if what happened in Foshan [read China] has never happened and will not happen anywhere else. The chance is, however, the Foshan tragedy could happen literally elsewhere, on any continent. Why? Because the reaction of people in Foshan was a manifestation of human nature. It is called the bystander effect. Psychologists have proven that people tend to avoid responsibility when there are more bystanders – primarily because they don’t feel morally obliged, thinking that someone else will probably help the one in need [but also, because of personal self-interest, in the first place - because they are in a hurry!]. There are many known and unknown cases of this. Unfortunately, being a good Samaritan is still quite an exceptional, unconventional human behavior.

Stating that the Foshan incident is a metaphor of how China is today is doing wrong both to China students and social psychology. The right way of putting it would be: while the Foshan incident tells us something about China today, it tells us even more about humanity as a whole.